Civics is a topic that is typically covered in high school. Even if you aren’t covering the same scope and sequence as public schools cover for your high schooler, it’s still incredibly important for our children to have an understanding of their rights and duties as a Canadian citizen. If you’re looking for a way to cover this topic with your homeschooled highschooler, check out “Canadian Civics: Purposeful, Informed and Active Citizenship” by Creating History.
ABOUT THE PROGRAM
This course was written to meet or exceed Ontario’s provincial standards for Canadian Civics. Canadian Civics is taken in Grade 10 in Ontario, as a half credit course. This course was written to cover the same amount of time and work.
It comes from a Christian worldview. The course synopsis on the website states that:
“In this course you will explore what it means to live as a Christian in community within an ever-changing Canadian culture. The course emphasizes the importance of being a purposeful, informed and active citizen.”
My high school daughter did this course. Even though civics is not a topic of interest for her, she liked how easy the course was to follow. She liked most of the included projects and how there was a lot of variety. She would have preferred a few more projects and less fill in the blank/question and answer format, but having some of those types of questions included helped to round out the study. She would have also appreciated the use of more colour in the workbook (there is some use of colour). However, this probably keeps the price more reasonable to purchase.
There is a great variety in the included projects. Some of the included projects are: creating your own island where you figure out how your island’s government will function, interviewing someone who has immigrated to Canada, using the newspaper and current events to complete tasks, and studying the messages, bias and perspective in political cartoons. A fun twist on the average assignment was when students are asked to create Twitter conversations for actual political party leaders.
There were also a few video suggestions for some of the units, where students were asked to watch a video that has connections to course content. I like that the author of the program notes where there is content that some families might find objectionable. He suggests when parents might want to preview the video.
Lectures for the course are fully narrated. This is an added plus!
Canadian Civics: Purposeful, Informed and Active Citizenship is available in three different formats. The first is through a physical workbook with access to digital resources. The second is paperless through Google Classroom. Lastly it is also available as a format for use in a homeschool co-op setting!
OUR THOUGHTS ABOUT CANADIAN CIVICS BY CREATING HISTORY
I really appreciate that this course is specifically designed for homeschooling. I’ve found it much easier to homeschool when I don’t have to figure out how to adapt something to fit homeschooling.
Another part of the course that I liked was the exam review activities package. This is to help the student with the final exam, and includes some information about how people learn, how to study and ideas for review.
I also liked how easy the course was to mark as the parent. The course is well outlined and gives a breakdown of how to give the marks. There are rubrics that help you as the teacher understand what is required for which mark.
I felt that the course was very thorough. It had a good balance of activities and workbook work, and it went in depth enough for the high school level that it is made for.
My favourite outcome of this course is that my daughter was encouraged to think critically about civics-related issues. I was also glad to be able to so easily cover the content for Canadian Civics.
I highly recommend checking out this course if you are looking for a Canadian Civics Course for your homeschooled highschooler! You can find it here: Creating History: Canadian Civics.
Be sure to check out Creating History’s other resources. Creating History also has a Canadian History Curriculum for High School which we have reviewed as well as a high school American History course and World History and the West.
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